Elisabet Norris's Reviews > H+ incorporated

Reading this book was like looking into the future through the author’s eyes. He puts his own spin on the future culture and its gadgetry. The book follows a realistic thread of the natural evolution of events in the scenes it presents. There is not much in-depth storytelling, but if it is written as a script, then it is to be expected, but as a book, more descriptions would have been appreciated.

The premise of the book is well thought out. This can be seen by the way the author was able to connect similarities in humanity from the past, present and future. Emotionally, people react the same way regardless of the era. This is captured well in the book.

The book did not mention nationalities or race as being minorities, but rather, it was my impression that those who were of artificial origin, or at least partially artificial, were considered the minority and humans without prosthetics, in fear of losing their balance, become the aggressors. This is seen in other futuristic scripts as well. Here, people are not worried about minorities taking their jobs, but rather AIs. Historically, riots have been a result of fear and powerlessness. The author’s description of human behavior reflects that of our current and past behaviors. This makes the story more realistic and easier to imagine.

The Government is depicted as controversial in the future, just like it always has been in the past. The author brought up a very important ethical dilemma that not many authors mention, so it stood out to me. This was the idea of whether the robotics are a part of you, and therefore a part of your person or whether the robotics are governmentally owned and therefore not a part of your person. This concept brings up very good points, but unfortunately the book falls short on elaborating.

What’s a good rebel story without classified projects? The author covered this as well. As to be expected, this would be an important thread in the book. It took awhile for the book to introduce the actual plot of the story, which is fine, except I did not have the opportunity to gain emotional ties with the plot.

It is interesting how in futuristic worlds, it is often that technology is advanced, but the overall human behavior stays primitive. The author captured this as well.

What I was missing from the book was the idea of a soul and when you cease to be you. If all that is left of you is the brain, so you receive a fully robotic body, does that technically mean you are still you? Is your soul in the brain? Is your personality in the brain? These are questions I felt were missing from the book. My guess is there would be people in riots holding up posters about that.

Most of the shortcomings in this book, can be explained by the fact it was written as a script and needs more elaboration in order to become a book. This has the potential to be an excellent sci-fi novel. With a story like this, I’d like to see at least a couple of hundred more pages of material in order to appreciate it fully. I’d give it 3.5 stars, but given the goodreads scale, I give it 4 stars.